New Motorola QWERTY slider released – Motorola Hint QA30

Not so long ago we wrote about new unannounced yet smartphone from Nokia with QWERTY keyboard. Motorola tried to not fall behind its competitor, and officially announced its own QWERTY slider, named Motorola Hint QA30. After all rumors in the past several days, Motorola finally presented its new phone, which is made with text message lovers in mind. Taking in consideration, that Motorola rarely releases something new nowadays, it doubles the interest to its new product.

Phones with QWERTY keyboard have their own piece of market. Modern times developed new type of communication – via text messages and instant messaging applications. It is extremely uncomfortable to type a long message on usual phone keypad, and while many people can live with it, someone can’t. This is the audience for QWERTY keyboard enabled phones, like this one. Motorola Hint QA30 is a CDMA cell phone that is a first Motorola slider with full QWERTY keyboard. It has a full set of modern multimedia functions, like QVGA 2.5″ display, video and audio playback (list of supported formats include MIDI, MP3, AAC, AAC+, AAC+ Enhanced, WMA v9 for audio and H.263, MPEG4, WMV v9 for video), microSDHC support up to 8 GB, Bluetooth Stereo, 2 megapixel camera with video recording, and 3.5 headphone jack for true music lovers. Internet functions are also present, and they are greatly done – fully featured HTML browser, integrated E-Mail and IM functions (which take full benefits from QWERTY keyboard – text input is greatly faster than on standard phone keypad). 128 MB of RAM gives great possibilities for multitasking; 256 MB of built-in memory leave plenty of space even if you forgot your card at home. Las, but not least – this model has aGPS support, so if carrier supports this function users will be able to track their position on the map.

Battery life is also quite impressive for a 940 mAh battery – up to 4.5 hours in talking mode and up to 15 days in standby. Phone is quite thick (because of sliding keyboard), but overall its size is not huge, so it will fit in almost every pocket: 82 x 61,6 x 17 mm, 120g weight.

This interesting novelty from Motorola will be released in stores in November 28 in USA, no information about other countries yet. Unfortunately, this is not a smartphone, but is has an impressive set of features for a usual phone and it will be popular amongst young and active people, who like to send text messages and listen music.

Nokia 6208c announced in China

Nokia was keeping us interested in its premieres all-round the year 2008 and the very last presentation of Nokia’s smartphone was held on the 31st of December, right before the New Year. At the ceremony in Nanjing, China, Nokia unveiled the 6208c mobile phone. The place for the presentation was not chosen accidentally of course. Many of those who follow major events in the world of gadgets might have become desperate to see any recent novelty before it appears in China, but Nokia 6208c is not likely to go round world markets – China will be the first and one of the few 6208c’s markets. This point is founded in the concept of the smartphone, in its Asian design, or may be in the fact that 6208c is a testing platform of new touchscreen capabilities.

So, what does Asian design actually mean to Nokia 6208c? The first thing to mansion is that Nokia’s corporate design didn’t go far away, so Nokia is easily recognized in the 6208c model. When I saw it for the fist time, 6300 communicator has come to my mind, but obviously, 6208c takes the 6708’s way, which is also a classic form factor touchscreen released in 2006. Secondly, 6208c is all about little creative differences in design. For instance, I can not bypass its stylus. This is the most interesting stylus by design ever I believe. However, I don’t like calling it weird or strange because Nokia would not place a poorly though out product under world’s consideration, and who knows, may be it turns out to be so comfortable to use, that you wouldn’t like to change it. Anyway the idea was to make it look like bamboo slips. Not an ordinary design of course, hence questionable, so let’s move to unquestionable pluses. One of those is Chinese hieroglyph recognition, write it down on the notepad and the phone will find the most appropriate hieroglyph in its library. Very good, but Nokia is not the first to have this sort of thing, iPhone also has this feature.

Other features are QVGA display with 2.4 inches and 320 x 240 resolution, 3.2 Mpix camera with 4 x digital zoom, dual LED flash, Bluetooth, USB connectivity, 3.5 mm jack, expandable with microSD cards memory and lots of other features that have not been described properly on the presentation. Yet is only clear that Nokia 6208c will be available in China in the first half of 2009, no word on pricing and other markets.